A little light reading

We’re not weighing in (yet) on North District Councilmember Joe Golombek’s proposal that the city adopt a city manager model of government. In that model, the city’s top executive would be a professional executive hired by the Common Council instead of an elected mayor, a position that would either disappear or become largely ceremonial.

Former Buffalo News editor Murray Light certainly made his mind known, however, in a column the News printed last Thursday. In a rambling, repetitive opinion piece, Light wrote the idea, however successful in other cities, is “doomed to fail in Buffalo, where the Common Council’s members never have worked in unison for the common good. It is hard to fathom how enough Council votes could agree on support for a candidate for a city manager.”

Light also let fly this doozy of a sentence: “The democratic tradition of duly elected citizens making the determination of who should be the principal administrative voice in city government goes down the drain in favor of one whom the city’s lawmakers would choose to run the city government.”

We elect citizens to vote? A “tradition” is replaced by a “one whom”? Is this how the Buffalo News read back when Light was its editor?

—geoff kelly